In the rain-slicked, decaying Fractured Ward, Leah survives by staying invisible. By day, she's a mender of old tech; by night, she cages a monster. Her magic isn't a gift-it's a void, a soul-deep hunger that drains the life and energy from the world around her, a power terrifyingly similar to the Withering, the magical plague slowly consuming the city. She lives in constant fear of the emptiness inside her, the part that yearns to drink the world dry.
But when the Withering claims her best friend, Zoe, invisibility is no longer an option. In a desperate act of love, Leah unleashes her full power to save her, tearing a hole in reality and exposing herself to the city's ruthless rulers: the Ascended. Captured and imprisoned, she becomes a prize in a secret war. One cruel Justicar sees a weapon to be dissected, while another, the cold and brilliant Nicholas Roberts, sees the only hope of a cure for his own dying sister.
Rescued by a band of desperate rebels who believe she is the key to their revolution, Leah is thrust into a new world of lies and shifting allegiances. Hunted by a regime that will stop at nothing, and haunted by the revelation that her entire life may have been a carefully constructed deception, she must learn to control a power that only knows how to destroy. With her former jailer as her only unlikely ally, Leah must navigate a world where friendship is a weapon and the line between monster and savior is as thin as a shadow. Can she master the void within before it consumes her and everyone she's trying to protect?
